Ancient Aliens and Modern UFOs

Good news, everyone! My talk for the Illini Secular Student Alliance at UIUC back in April is now up for everyone to see. In my presentation, I talk about the 20th century origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis (now in its modern TV form, Ancient Aliens), the sorts of claims about the past and why they don’t hold up, and into the sorts of claims related to modern UFOs and alien visitations–that is, close encounters. I also get to bring up my research and book on the Star of Bethlehem.

You can watch the talk here (kindly recorded and edited by Illini SSA group members):

At the end I provided a bunch of links to useful websites, which I reproduce here:

Hey Aaron. I used to run that student group when I was there a few years ago, hope it’s still a good group.

Gilgamesh42

They seemed to be a pretty darn good group to me. Treated me well, there was a large gathering (apparently one of their largest for a talk in some time), and they were fun. They get an A in my book; how much of that is your doing I’ll let you decide :)